Nevada Casinos Up 1.5% To $10.8bn In 2012

The Nevada Gaming Control Board has now released its casino results for December, 2012, revealing the state closed the year out on a strong note with revenues up by nearly 10% to $943 million. The Las Vegas Strip typically accounts for around half the state’s revenue and during December its revenue increased by 13.5% to $588 million, while overall the state collected around $39 million in taxes, an improvement of 23.5% from the previous year.

There was further good news for America’s top gambling resort, as for the whole of 2012 the state of Nevada recorded a 1.5% increase in revenue to $10.8 billion with slot machine revenues up by 0.7% and accounting for 62.5% of the total gaming win throughout the year, and table games also increasing by 2.9%. Breaking the figures down further, Downtown Las Vegas reported the biggest percentage gain up 2.5% to $509.14 million, followed by The Las Vegas Strip up 2.3% to $6.2 billion, marking two straight years where revenues topped $6 billion. Elsewhere, Laughlin posted a modest 0.6 percent fall in revenue to $462.06 million; the Boulder Strip was up by 2.3%; North Las Vegas increased by 1.9%; Mesquite down 0.2%; and the rest of Clark County was off by 0.5%.
Nevertheless, despite Nevada’s solid results it still lags significantly behind the world top gambling resort of Macau, which saw its revenues rocket by 13.5% to $38 billion over the same period albeit at a slower rate than the 42% growth rate the Chinese enclave recorded between 2010 and 2011. Macau’s 35 casinos also saw their revenues increase by 20% in December from a year earlier to $3.54 billion, and commenting on its results JP Morgan gaming analyst Joe Greff said:
“The month’s revenue result for December is important as investors are likely to use it to form baseline growth expectations for 2013. Currently, buy-side expectations for 2013 marketwide growth are in the high-single digit range.”